My wife and I were recently on a hike with friends when the conversation turned to negative political campaign ads. It was late September and the November campaigns were already gearing up their attacks on the opposition.

If you are watching television during this time, you can’t help but see these ads stacked one on top of the other. The only thing that makes this barrage bearable is the knowledge that it will end on the first Tuesday in November.

As someone who has worked in the political field for over a decade, I’ve become somewhat immune to, if not at times directly responsible for, negative campaigning. As a professional, this is just another tool to get your job done.

But, as a voter, this conversation with friends about attack ads got me questioning some basic assumptions.

How did all of this negativity get started anyway? Perhaps the earliest if not the most famous ads in the TV era was the “Daisy Girl” ad run by President Johnson’s campaign team.

You probably can’t get more negative than implying that your opponent, in this case Barry Goldwater, is going to be responsible for all out nuclear war leading to the death of innocent American children.

But, Johnson certainly wasn’t the first in the U.S. In the 1828 presidential contest, supporters of John Quincy Adams produced the Coffin Handbills to wage brutal personal attacks on Andrew Jackson. Jackson’s mother was accused of being a prostitute and his wife of being an adulteress. Yikes!

Conventional wisdom in political campaigning is that negative ads are far more powerful than positive ones. And, having witnessed a number of voter focus groups over the years, I can attest that this is absolutely true. A few savvy voters will see through the rhetoric, but most will get caught up in it.

In a way, the ads we see are merely a reflection of what we respond to most powerfully. There is no political consultant worth her salt that will turn her back on a winning message, positive or not. Nor should she as she has a duty to map a pathway to political victory.

But, there might be hope.

In a broadcast-only world, voters were recipients of messages at the end of a one-way conduit. But, in the digital era, we voters can more readily choose our response. And now, a campaign’s broadcast is just the spark of a conversation that can play-out in the open forums of blogs, discussion groups and social networks.

Voters can now check the facts and respond directly to a campaign. They can start a movement of others like-minded and demand accountability. A good friend of mine is starting just such a platform for congressional legislation at Countable. But, we need similar platforms for our elections.

Amazon.com has made us more discerning customers of products. Open ratings, reviews and detailed product information give us all we need to make a great buying decision. We need to become more discerning customers of our politicians in this same way.

Anticipating this new reality, forward-looking campaigns could embrace these more modern ways of telling their stories. Open data, interactive visualizations and side-by-side comparisons could provide full transparency on a campaign’s policies. This works for everyone. The more information voters have, the more likely they are to be engaged in the process.

Ultimately, we will continue to be bombarded by negative ads as long as we allow them to work. So, as a voter, the best remedy against negative ads is to be informed…and to demand data to back up a campaign’s claims.

The political process is a pretty big ship so change won’t happen overnight. But, if each of us took just 60 minutes of action each political cycle we can start to turn things in the right direction.

No country can develop unless its citizens are educated. —Nelson Mandela

So, before we fill in those little bubbles on our ballots this year we should all do our research. With a few keystrokes we can take advantage of the wealth of information at our fingertips. Some great places to start are here, here and here.